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Two shot, one dead, at PQ victory party by alleged Anglophone

Police cordon off the rear outside an auditorium where a gunman shot and killed at least one person during the PQ victory rally Wednesday, September 5, 2012 in Montreal. Guards whisked PQ leader Pauline Marois off the stage as handlers informed the partisan crowd there had been an explosive noise and they needed to clear the auditorium. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Pauline Marois was speaking to her supporters, celebrating the Parti Quebecois victory. There were a lot of young people there, drinking beer, cheering their favourites and booing their opponents, waving Quebec flags and enjoying their victory.

I was writing a blog post about the crowd’s reaction to events throughout the evening, and not paying close attention to the speech, so when Marois stopped speaking, I didn’t realize at first that something had happened.

I think I heard a couple of pops, but I don’t know for sure.

I looked up from my computer, and saw that other people were looking around, confused. I hadn’t been listening closely to Marois, but it seemed like the speech had ended without the kind of crescendo that marks the end of such things.

I learned later that she had been hauled off the stage by her security team mid-speech, but from where I was sitting I couldn’t have seen that happen even if I had been watching.

After a few moments, emcee Yves Desgagnés came onto the stage and explained that there had been some kind of noise maker thrown, and asked everyone to evacuate.

He made a light remark about the necessity of protecting Quebec’s first female prime minister, and some people laughed and the crowd started to move toward the rear exit.

Then Marois came back on the stage, and told people they didn’t have to evacuate after all. She spoke for a while, stopped, then invited candidates to come up on the stage with her and started praising her team. She appears to have continued where she left off earlier.

I thought she showed remarkable sangfroid throughout what must have been a horrible and frightening moment.

Meanwhile, the news was breaking that something serious had happened outside the club.

I queued up with the departing PQ supporters and made my way outside. A handful of officers eyeballed the crowd as they left, presumably watching out for anyone suspicious.

Outside, in the rain, the police had formed a line in front of the club and were directing people to move left, away from the club entrance and away from the alley to the right of the door, which leads back to the space behind the club.

The police had set up a tape line there. Firefighters arrived and went through, then left.

On Radio Canada, meanwhile, viewers were watching video of a fire at the back of the club, the arrest of a disturbed-looking heavy-set middle-aged man wearing a bathrobe and balaclava.

It was reported that he could be heard in accented French saying something about the English waking up.

I found this alarming. The PQ event had felt tense at times, with supporters drowning out Liberal Leader Jean Charest on TV when he spoke English during his speech, and moments later it suddenly seemed that hard feelings about language had turned into real violence.

More police arrived and widened the security cordon around the entrance to the nightclub, putting up tape lines and moving onlookers and journalists away. Some of the beer-fueled PQ supporters seemed oblivious to the horrible turn of events, cheerfully wandering off. I suspect they didn’t know much about what happened. A small group sang Gens du Pays, the unofficial anthem of the Quebec independence movement, as they wandered off arm in arm.

Eventually the police shooed the journalists away. I found myself standing with some colleagues at the doorway of Les Foufounes Électriques, a punk bar that I like. We went inside and I drank a beer and watched the footage on the bar TV and followed what was happening on my Blackberry. I learned that someone had been killed.

After the beer, I heard there might be a news conference nearby.

We walked a few blocks to Boulevard De Maisonneuve, where reporters, cameramen and some boozers were clustered at the police line, hunched against the rain.

Ian Lafrenière, a spokesman for the Montreal police, came to the line and answered many questions, first in French and then in English.

He said police were conducting a homicide investigation. A man with two firearms went to the back of the club, entered and opened fire, killing one man, who, according to news reports, was a technician who worked at the club. He injured another man, who, according to news reports, was a fill-in driver for the Parti Quebecois bus.

Lafrenière didn’t know if the man was trying to shoot Marois, but it appears that after shooting two people, he exited the club and used some kind of accelerant to start a fire.

Within a minute or two of the shooting the suspect was subdued by officers, who happened to be nearby. He did not resist.

Later, I talked to Martin Bouffard, the Radio Canada cameraman who filmed the fire.

Bouffard had been waiting out front, ready to get footage of Marois leaving the rally, when he heard the shots from behind the club. He went up the alley and filmed the fire, filmed the police handling an assault rifle, and filmed them as they took the suspect out to a police car.

Whatever our political disagreements, we have no tradition of sectarian violence. This is not how we settle things.

The police won’t say anything at all about the suspect, but Bouffard heard them talking to him.

“His name was Richard,” Bouffard said. “He was an anglophone.”

Bouffard, who was calm and helpful after enduring a great deal of stress, seemed nervous that his observation about the linguistic background of the suspect might be controversial, I suspect because he fears that it could somehow lead to an increase in tension.

I am also nervous about that.

This is a deadly serious business.

Canada is not Northern Ireland. Montreal is not Belfast.

Whatever our political disagreements, we have no tradition of sectarian violence. This is not how we settle things.

Marois issued a statement in the small hours of the morning.

“My thoughts go first of all to the family and those close to the deceased victim. Next in this tragedy are all Quebecers who are in mourning before such an act of gratuitous violence. Never will a society like ours let violence dictate our collective choices. It’s by the democratic voices that we must express ourselves, as Quebecers were able to do yesterday.”